Disney is buying Fubo and plans to merge the sports streaming platform with its Hulu + Live TV service, gaining 70 percent ownership of the company that up until today was suing it over antitrust concerns and allegations of anticompetitive practices.

According to Fubo’s announcement today, the unified company will be known as Fubo, and Fubo executives will run it. People will also continue to be able to subscribe to Fubo without subscribing to Hulu + Live TV and vice versa. Also part of the announcement is the revelation that Fubo has settled its antitrust lawsuit against Disney, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) over Venu, a joint venture sports app that the companies plan to launch and that Fubo was seeking to block, citing the three firms' allegedly anticompetitive practices.

Fubo had previously claimed that Disney, Fox, and WBD had forced it to pay for irrelevant channels that don’t appeal to sports fans by bundling those networks with sports networks. Fubo’s lawsuit accused Disney and Fox of forcing it to spend millions on unwanted content and forcing it “to drop valuable channels” through price hikes.

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The Waymo self-driving company says it has fixed a problem that caused a car to repeatedly circle a parking lot for about five minutes while its rider was trying to get to an airport.

Last month, Mike Johns posted a video on LinkedIn showing what happened after he was picked up by a Waymo self-driving car in Scottsdale, Arizona. Johns' post said the car made eight circles. After a Waymo support agent helped get the car moving in the right direction, he was driven to the airport in time to make his flight.

"Why is this happening to me on a Monday? I'm in a Waymo car and this car is just going in circles... I got a flight to catch, why is this thing going in a circle? I'm getting dizzy," he said in the video.

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AMD's CES announcements include a tease about next-gen graphics cards, a new flagship desktop CPU, and a modest refresh of its processors for handheld gaming PCs. But the company's largest announcement, by volume, is about laptop processors.

Today the company is expanding the Ryzen AI 300 lineup with a batch of updated high-end chips with up to 16 CPU cores and some midrange options for cheaper Copilot+ PCs. AMD has repackaged some of its high-end desktop chips for gaming laptops, including the first Ryzen laptop CPU with 3D V-Cache enabled. And there's also a new-in-name-only Ryzen 200 series, another repackaging of familiar silicon to address lower-budget laptops.

Ryzen AI 300 is back, along with high-end Max and Max+ versions

Ryzen AI is back, with Max and Max+ versions that include huge integrated GPUs. Credit: AMD

We came away largely impressed by the initial Ryzen AI 300 processors in August 2024, and new processors being announced today expand the lineup upward and downward.

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AMD's batch of CES announcements this year includes just two new products for desktop PC users: the new Ryzen 9 9950X3D and 9900X3D. Both will be available at some point in the first quarter of 2025.

Both processors include additional CPU cores compared to the 9800X3D that launched in November. The 9900X3D includes 12 Zen 5 CPU cores with a maximum clock speed of 5.5 GHz, and the 9950X3D includes 16 cores with a maximum clock speed of 5.7 GHz. Both include 64MB of extra L3 cache compared to the regular 9900X and 9950X, for a total cache of 144MB and 140MB, respectively; games in particular tend to benefit disproportionately from this extra cache memory.

But the 9950X3D and 9900X3D aren't being targeted at people who build PCs primarily to game—the company says their game performance is usually within 1 percent of the 9800X3D. These processors are for people who want peak game performance when they're playing something but also need lots of CPU cores for chewing on CPU-heavy workloads during the workday.

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Nearly two years ago, AMD announced its first Ryzen Z1 processors. These were essentially the same silicon that AMD was putting in high-end thin-and-light laptops but tuned specifically for handheld gaming PCs like the Steam Deck and Asus ROG Ally X. As part of its CES announcements today, AMD is refreshing that lineup with three processors, all slated for an undisclosed date in the first quarter of 2025.

Although they're all part of the "Ryzen Z2" family, each of these three chips is actually much different under the hood, and some of them are newer than others.

The Ryzen Z2 Extreme is what you'd expect from a refresh: a straightforward upgrade to both the CPU and GPU architectures of the Ryzen Z1 Extreme. Based on the same "Strix Point" architecture as the Ryzen AI 300 laptop processors, the Z2 Extreme includes eight CPU cores (three high-performance Zen 5 cores, five smaller and efficiency-optimized Zen 5C cores) and an unnamed RDNA 3.5 GPU with 16 of AMD's compute units (CUs). These should both provide small bumps to CPU and GPU performance relative to the Ryzen Z1 Extreme, which used eight Zen 4 CPU cores and 12 RDNA 3 GPU cores.

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After ditching the traditional Dell XPS laptop look in favor of the polarizing design of the XPS 13 Plus released in 2022, Dell is killing the XPS branding that has become a mainstay for people seeking a sleek, respectable, well-priced PC.

This means that there won't be any more Dell XPS clamshell ultralight laptops, 2-in-1 laptops, or desktops. Dell is also killing its Latitude, Inspiron, and Precision branding, it announced today.

Moving forward, Dell computers will have either just Dell branding, which Dell’s announcement today described as “designed for play, school, and work,” Dell Pro branding “for professional-grade productivity,” or be Dell Pro Max products, which are “designed for maximum performance." Dell will release Dell and Dell Pro-branded displays, accessories, and "services," it said. The Pro Max line will feature laptops and desktop workstations with professional-grade GPU capabilities as well as a new thermal design.

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Nvidia is widely expected to announce specs, pricing, and availability information for the first few cards in the new RTX 50 series at its CES keynote later today. AMD isn't ready to get as specific about its next-generation graphics lineup yet, but the company shared a few morsels today about its next-generation RDNA 4 graphics architecture and its 9000-series graphics cards.

AMD mentioned that RDNA 4 cards were on track to launch in early 2025 during a recent earnings call, acknowledging that shipments of current-generation RX 7000-series cards were already slowing down. CEO Lisa Su said then that the architecture would include "significantly higher ray-tracing performance" as well as "new AI capabilities."

AMD's RDNA 4 launch will begin with the 9070 XT and 9070, which are both being positioned as upper-midrange GPUs like the RTX 4070 series. Credit: AMD

The preview the company is providing today provides few details beyond those surface-level proclamations. The compute units will be "optimized," AI compute will be "supercharged," ray-tracing will be "improved," and media encoding quality will be "better," but AMD isn't providing hard numbers for anything at this point. The RDNA 4 launch will begin with the Radeon RX 9070 XT and 9070 at some point in Q1 of 2025, and AMD will provide more information "later in the quarter."

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We've all had a good seven years to figure out why our interconnected devices refused to work properly with the HDMI 2.1 specification. The HDMI Forum announced at CES today that it's time to start considering new headaches. HDMI 2.2 will require new cables for full compatibility, but it has the same physical connectors. Tiny QR codes are suggested to help with that, however.

The new specification is named HDMI 2.2, but compatible cables will carry an "Ultra96" marker to indicate that they can carry 96GBps, double the 48 of HDMI 2.1b. The Forum anticipates this will result in higher resolutions and refresh rates and a "next-gen HDMI Fixed Rate Link." The Forum cited "AR/VR/MR, spatial reality, and light field displays" as benefiting from increased bandwidth, along with medical imaging and machine vision.

A bit closer to home, the HDMI 2.2 specification also includes "Latency Indication Protocol" (LIP), which can help improve audio and video synchronization. This should matter most in "multi-hop" systems, such as home theater setups with soundbars or receivers. Illustrations offered by the Forum show LIP working to correct delays on headphones, soundbars connected through ARC or eARC, and mixed systems where some components may be connected to a TV, while others go straight into the receiver.

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On Sunday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman offered two eye-catching predictions about the near-future of artificial intelligence. In a post titled "Reflections" on his personal blog, Altman wrote, "We are now confident we know how to build AGI as we have traditionally understood it." He added, "We believe that, in 2025, we may see the first AI agents 'join the workforce' and materially change the output of companies."

Both statements are notable coming from Altman, who has served as the leader of OpenAI during the rise of mainstream generative AI products such as ChatGPT. AI agents are the latest marketing trend in AI, allowing AI models to take action on a user's behalf. However, critics of the company and Altman immediately took aim at the statements on social media.

"We are now confident that we can spin bullshit at unprecedented levels, and get away with it," wrote frequent OpenAI critic Gary Marcus in response to Altman's post. "So we now aspire to aim beyond that, to hype in purest sense of that word. We love our products, but we are here for the glorious next rounds of funding. With infinite funding, we can control the universe."

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After a long career as a politician from Florida, former astronaut Bill Nelson has served as NASA's administrator for the last three and a half years. He intends to resign from this position in about two weeks when President Joe Biden ends his term in the White House.

Several significant events have happened under Nelson's watch at NASA, including the long-delayed but ultimately successful launch of the James Webb Space Telescope, the flight of the first Artemis mission, and the momentous decision to fly Boeing's Starliner spacecraft back to Earth without crew aboard. But as he leaves office, there are questions about ongoing delays with NASA's signature Artemis Program to return humans to the Moon.

Ars spoke with Nelson about his time in office, the major decisions he made, and the concerns he has for the space agency's future under the Trump administration. What follows is a lightly edited transcript of our conversation.

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Last month, we asked readers to donate to a couple of good causes in our 2024 Charity Drive sweepstakes. And boy, did you deliver. With the drive now complete and the donations all tallied, we can report that Ars Technica readers gave an incredible $39,047.66 to Child's Play and the Electronic Frontier Foundation in this year's drive. That doesn't set a new record, but it nearly matches last year's total and raises our lifetime Ars Charity Drive donation haul since 2007 to over $540,000. Well done, Arsians!

Thanks to everyone who gave whatever they could. We're still early in the process of selecting and notifying winners of our swag giveaway, so don't fret if you haven't heard if you're a winner yet. In the meantime, enjoy these quick stats from the 2024 drive.

• 2024 fundraising total: $39,047.66
  • Total given to Child's Play: $14,914.82
  • Total given to the EFF: $23,912.89
• Number of individual donations: 378
  • Child's Play donations: 201
  • EFF donations: 174
• Average donation: $103.30
  • Child's Play average donation: $74.20
  • EFF average donation: $137.43
• Median donation: $50.75
  • Median Child's Play donation: $50.00
  • Median EFF donation: $66.95
• Top single donation: $3,000 (to EFF)
• Donations of $1,000 or more: 7
• Donations of $100 or more: 133
• $5 or less donations: 6 (every little bit helps!)

• Total charity donations from Ars Technica drives since 2007 (approximate): $542,935.18
  • 2024: $39,047.66
  • 2023: $39,830.36
  • 2022: $31,656.07
  • 2021: $40,261.71
  • 2020: $58,758.11
  • 2019: $33,181.11
  • 2018: $20,210.66
  • 2017: $36,012.37
  • 2016: $38,738.11
  • 2015: $38,861.06
  • 2014: $25,094.31
  • 2013: $23,570.13
  • 2012: $28,713.52
  • 2011: ~$26,000
  • 2010: ~$24,000
  • 2009: ~$17,000
  • 2008: ~$12,000
  • 2007: ~$10,000

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The latest rage in automotive vehicle design is the so-called "software-defined vehicle." Instead of dozens and dozens of discrete black boxes, each with its own legacy cruft, an SDV is a clean-sheet approach with a handful of powerful computers, each responsible for a different domain, like powertrain, safety, or infotainment. This allows for a large degree of flexibility to do things in software, whether that's changing the handling, tweaking the UI, or boosting power output.

That's if you're an automaker, at least. Invariably, any customization a driver might want to do only exists within the bounds set up by that OEM. This might extend to some different UI themes, including the ability to upload your own images as a wallpaper and choose between a kaleidoscope of interior LED lighting colors. Even the full-dash, next-generation version of Apple CarPlay is yet to appear in anything production-ready.

For older cars served by the aftermarket, things are a little more free. This is all a long-winded way of saying, "Hey, check out this rad dashboard mod in a Nissan 300ZX I saw on Instagram over the weekend."

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Andrew Garberson has a message for drivers in cold-climate states like Minnesota: Yes, you can still drive an electric car.

Public scrutiny over how well EVs perform in cold weather has grown in recent years following high-profile incidents, like one in Chicago last winter, when several Tesla drivers found themselves stuck in line for hours, waiting for their turn at public charging stations as temperatures dipped below zero. Many drivers reported that the cold had not only sapped their batteries of power but also made charging them a major hassle.

Cold weather temporarily reduces the available energy of EV batteries and slows their ability to charge—though they’ll function normally again in warmer conditions. Heating the car’s cabin during winter also requires energy from the battery, meaning less fuel for travel.

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Intel's Core Ultra 200 series is currently bifurcated between two architectures: Lunar Lake, which powers the Core Ultra 200V series of laptop chips; and Arrow Lake, which is included in the Core Ultra 200S desktop processors. Arrow Lake processors can include many more CPU cores, but only Lunar Lake uses Intel's latest GPU architecture and a neural processing unit (NPU) fast enough for Microsoft's Copilot+ functionality.

Intel is rounding out the rest of the Core Ultra 200 family today at CES, and the most important thing to know is that it's Arrow Lake, and not Lunar Lake, that is powering all of these new processors (though with a major caveat for 200U series chips, more on that in a bit).

This means that none of them are fast enough to earn the Copilot+ label or use upcoming features like Windows Recall, and none of them will have integrated graphics that are as good as the Core Ultra 200V. But it will make them a better fit for gaming laptops and other kinds of systems that prioritize CPU performance or include an external graphics card, as well as less-expensive ultraportable laptops.

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Last January at CES, Microsoft Chief Marketing Officer Yusuf Mehdi declared 2024 the "year of the AI PC." And whether you believe that prediction came true or not—many new PCs come with AI-accelerating neural processing units (NPUs) onboard, but far from all of them—you can't deny that Microsoft did try very hard to make it happen.

This year, Mehdi is back with another prediction: 2025 will be "the year of the Windows 11 PC refresh." This year is also, not coincidentally, the year that most Windows 10 PCs will stop receiving new security updates.

Mehdi's post includes few, if any, new announcements, but it does set the tone for how Microsoft is handling the sunsetting of Windows 10, attempting to strike a balance between carrot and stick. The carrots include Windows 11's new features (both AI and otherwise) and the performance, security, and battery life benefits inherent to brand-new PC hardware. The stick is that Windows 10 support ends in October 2025, and Microsoft is not interested in extending that date for the general public or in expanding official Windows 11 support to older PCs.

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The pastime of pinball has lived a fraught existence. Whether due to public sentiment, hostile legislation, or a simple lack of popularity, the entire silver ball industry has repeatedly teetered on the brink of collapse. Yet it has always come back, today again riding a wave of popularity driven by the successes of high-tech machines capitalizing on familiar brands like X-Men and Godzilla.

Pinball arcades are springing up everywhere, but private ownership is also surging. Those modern tables with their high-definition displays and brilliant LED lights are getting the most attention, but there is a breed of pinball enthusiast who not only owns a selection of classic machines but also obsessively maintains and restores them.

These collectors have just as much love for the maze of mechanicals beneath the surface as the trajectories the silver ball follows. The goal isn't high scores; it's keeping ornately complex vintage contraptions looking and playing like new.

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With the holiday release of the biopic A Complete Unknown, Bob Dylan is once again in the national spotlight. For me, the film provided a welcome excuse to read up on Dylan, who has always been a reputable source of enjoyably gnomic quotes, self-mythologizing, and enigmatic asides. Even in his old age, Dylan still delivers—especially when he gets going on technology, joysticks, and "dog ass" television programs.

Consider the interview Dylan gave to The Wall Street Journal in December 2022. (You can read the whole thing on BobDylan.com.) The piece was, notionally, about Dylan's book, The Philosophy of Modern Song. But it quickly morphed into a meditation on creativity in the era of on-demand streaming content, along with a discussion about how Dylan had spent his time during the COVID-19 lockdowns.

Dylan claims that he spent the pandemic replacing door panels on a ’56 Chevy, painting some landscapes, and re-reading “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” while pondering the mysteries of opium. Okay. He also had time left over to stream some TV:

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It's difficult to comprehend what 1,000 cubic kilometers of rock would look like. It's even more difficult to imagine it being violently flung into the air. Yet the Yellowstone volcanic system blasted more than twice that amount of rock into the sky about 2 million years ago, and it has generated a number of massive (if somewhat smaller) eruptions since, and there have been even larger eruptions deeper in the past.

All of which might be enough to keep someone nervously watching the seismometers scattered throughout the area. But a new study suggests that there's nothing to worry about in the near future: There's not enough molten material pooled in one place to trigger the sort of violent eruptions that have caused massive disruptions in the past. The study also suggests that the primary focus of activity may be shifting outside of the caldera formed by past eruptions.

Understanding Yellowstone

Yellowstone is fueled by what's known as a hotspot, where molten material from the Earth's mantle percolates up through the crust. The rock that comes up through the crust is typically basaltic (a definition based on the ratio of elements in its composition) and can erupt directly. This tends to produce relatively gentle eruptions where lava flows across a broad area, generally like you see in Hawaii and Iceland. But this hot material can also melt rock within the crust, producing a material called rhyolite. This is a much more viscous material that does not flow very readily and, instead, can cause explosive eruptions.

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The US government finally got its metaphorical hands on Do Hyeong Kwon, the 33-year-old Korean national who built a financial empire on the cryptocurrency Luna and the "stablecoin" TerraUSD, only to see it all come crashing down in a wipeout that cost investors $40 billion.

As private investors filed lawsuits, and as the governments of South Korea and the United States launched fraud investigations, Do Kwon was nowhere to be found. In 2022, the Korean government filed a "red notice" with Interpol, seeking Kwon's arrest and his return to Korea. A few months later, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Kwon with fraud in the US.

On September 17, 2022, Kwon famously tweeted, "I am not 'on the run' or anything similar"—but he also wouldn't say where he was. He didn't help his case when he was arrested in March 2023 by the authorities in Montenegro. At an airport. With fake travel documents. On his way to a country with no US extradition agreement.

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Last September, faulty door handle hardware caused Volkswagen to take the rather drastic steps of suspending sales and production of the electric crossover, as well as recalling almost 100,000 customer cars. Now, it says it has new parts that will allow it to fix existing cars, lift the stop-sale order, and soon, resume production at its factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

The ID.4, like many new EVs, features flush door handles in service of the all-important effort of drag reduction. Instead of conventional mechanical handles that interrupt the laminar air flow down the side of the car, VW instead went with an electromechanical solution.

Unfortunately, the door handle assemblies weren't sufficiently waterproofed, allowing the electronics inside to corrode. Consequently, early last year VW started getting complaints of ID.4s with doors that would intermittently open while driving, with reporting almost 300 warranty claims by September, when it pulled the car from sale, issued the recall, and stopped the production line.

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